Our supreme fabulist of the ordinary now turns his attention on a 9yearoldAmerican girl and produces a novel as enchantingly idiosyncratic as any he haswritten.... » 

Our supreme fabulist of the ordinary now turns his attention on a 9yearoldAmerican girl and produces a novel as enchantingly idiosyncratic as any he haswritten. Nory Winslow wants to be a dentist or a designer of popup books. Shelikes telling stories and inventing dolls. She has nightmares about teethwhich may explain her career choice. She is going to school in England whereshe is mocked for her accent and her friendship with an unpopular girl and shehas made it through the year without crying. Nicholson Baker follows Noryas she interacts with her parents and peers thinks about God and deathwatchbeetles and dreams of cows with pointed teeth. In this precocious child hegives us a heroine as canny and as whimsical as Lewis Carrolls Alice andevokes childhood in all its luminous weirdness. «